The 1999 Speech from the Throne:
The Quality of our Environment

October 12, 1999

Canadians have long recognized that a clean and healthy environment is essential to maintaining and enhancing our quality of life; to our health today and to our children's future; to making Canada the place to be in the 21^st century.

More they have understood that the quality of our environment in Canada is linked to the health of the global environment -- that making progress will require both domestic and international action.

Developing and adopting innovative environmental practices and "green" technologies will be a source of Canada's strength in the 21^st century.

Our goal is help Canadians push the frontiers of environmental technology and eco-efficient practices.

A Record of Achievement

With the passage of the renewed Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Government has stronger powers and new tools to protect the environment and human health.

The renewed CEPA sets strict guidelines for controlling toxic substances.

We have also committed $72 million in new funding to help protect the environment from toxic substances. That's in addition to the $40 million contained in the last Budget for research into toxic substances that harm human health and the environment.

We have established regulations to help effect a 10-fold reduction in gasoline sulphur levels by 2005. This will prevent an estimated 2,100 premature deaths from respiratory diseases over a 20-year period.

Federal-provincial-territorial harmonization agreements will ensure more effective and efficient use of taxpayers' environmental protection dollars. Building from these agreements, we have reached environmental assessment agreements with Alberta and B.C., and are close to agreements with several other provinces.

$150 million in new funding has been devoted to climate change activities over a three-year period. Our national efforts to find solutions to greenhouse gas emissions are being conducted in concert with international efforts to meet this global challenge.

1999 SFT Commitments

We will:

• work with other governments and citizens to meet Canada's commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions;

• set and enforce tough pollution standards, in particular to better protect the health of children, seniors and residents of the North;

• address the weaknesses identified in the management of toxic substances;

• provide technical assistance to developing countries to help them adopt environmentally sustainable practices;

• introduce legislation and programs, and work with the provinces and territories, to ensure that species at risk and their critical natural habitat are protected;

• continue to extend Canada's national parks system;

• become a model of environmental excellence in all aspects of Government operations – cleaning up contaminated federal sites and strengthening environmental science capacity, including a research program on clean-up technologies;

• report regularly on the results achieved in addressing the top environmental concerns of Canadians.